Flexagoner
Flexagoner (Japanese: フレックスの世界：次元の悲劇 Furekkusu no Sekai: Jigen no Higeki, lit. World of Flex: Dimensional Tragedy) is an upcoming role-playing puzzle game developed by AM Studios for the Display and Display C. Should we work on this game? Should AM Studios work on this game? Flexagoner Plot A few centuries from now, great technological and scientific advancements have been made. However, most citizens of this future Earth still wear basic clothes, live in houses(-turned-apartments), and drive earthbound cars, as humans tend to do. Due to said advancements, the global infant mortality rate has been brought down to near-zero levels, leading to widespread overpopulation. World hunger and water shortages have resurfaced, forests are nearly a thing of the past, the ozone layer is becoming thinner yet, and wars over resources are commonplace. That's not to mention the unwieldy rush "hour", or the number of roads and parking lots that have to be put up. And prices of basic goods and services are inflating tenfold, due to demand skyrocketing in dense nations. Over time, spaceships were dispatched to collect materials from faraway celestial bodies. However, there is this huge element of luck that makes completing such a mission more expensive than helpful. If only there were a way to access remote substances directly from Earth… The real story begins with the a young child named Vesper. Her father is a renowned engineer, who for the past couple of decades has been working on an apparatus to bridge the gap between alternate dimensions. Funding for this project has dwindled over the years, but he has persevered nonetheless. After work, he tries fruitlessly to get Vesper interested in recreational mathematics, hoping to inspire her to study advanced math later in life. The closest he gets to this goal is showing her how to fold a basic trihexaflexagon. Vesper shows mild interest in flexing the model before tossing it aside. Years later, the project is nearing completion, with the interdimensional equipment mere months from being fully functional. Vesper has indeed grown slightly interested in applied mathematics, and asks to come to her father's workplace to see his work. He takes her deep into the bowels of his building, into a large underground laboratory, where he proudly unveils the machine in all its almost-finished glory. While she marvels at it, Vesper's arm accidentally hits a lever. She, along with the nearby documentation and research papers, is whisked into an alternate dimension. The apparatus itself is unharmed, but Vesper's dad's two prides are seemingly vaporized away in front of his eyes. Feeling nauseatingly guilty and heartbroken, he halts all progress on the dimensional bridge project, convinced that he will never see his daughter (and less importantly, the project's paperwork) again because of it. Unbeknownst to anyone back on Earth, Vesper is still alive and well. She lands in an alternate dimension that is not her own, with the documentation scattering about nearby. However, this dimension seems oddly familiar, and the shape of the planetoid below her feet forces a childhood memory out of the recesses of her mind. And after a moment of panic, Vesper also realizes that maybe, just maybe, she can use the paperwork to build a copy of the machine, provided she can find the right parts… Gameplay In her quest to return to our dimension, Vesper travels around a rather unique open world, segmented into flexagonal planetoids. Most planetoids happen to have at least a few parts for the machine, though several have duplicate parts and others have none at all. An example of the latter case is a planetoid serving as a town, with buildings, NPCs and all. Each planetoid also has a hypercube, letting Vesper choose another planetoid to travel to upon being touched. Flexagoner makes use of the television screen, via the Display Box, as well as the two screens on a Display or Sight controller. Vesper and the current planetoid are viewed on the TV, and and can be used to move her along an invisible grid. However, unlike in most RPGs, this grid is not necessarily composed of squares; rather, it is shaped relative to the shape of each planetoid, with the origin at its center. The research documentation is shown on the top screen, and can be referred to whenever necessary, though some of it does not use the clearest possible wording. and switch between pages; pressing both shoulders at once will zoom the view out and in, switching between multiple- and single-page views. The bottom screen represents the current planetoid's Tuckerman traverse; a state directly accessible from the current one can be tapped to flex the planetoid to said state. This "traverse map" can be zoomed by performing a multitouch pinch, or by pressing the SELECT button. Finally, when Vesper touches a hypercube, the traverse map will become a map of all of the planetoids, many of which are locked off in some story-related way until she is carrying certain machine parts. Strange, hostile enemies roam the various planetoids, and touching one will initiate a battle. Vesper can either attack with a (relatively weak) punch, or by throwing a part. The latter option will damage the enemy according to said part's size, at the obvious expense of losing that part altogether. Thus, Vesper will only follow through on throwing a part if she has at least two of its kind. Vesper can also dodge attacks to the left or right using and , respectively, or block by pressing both at the same time. The final act of the game involves Vesper teleported back to Earth far from home, and gameplay changes dramatically. There are fewer enemies to battle, and hazards like cars and smog can defeat the player from the overworld. Rather than having documentation and automatically-generated maps to help them, the player must find notes and maps scattered about the cities. Characters Enemies Gallery FlexagonerLogoBeta.png|Initial logo SSB Flexagoner.png|''Super Smash Bros.''-style series logotype Category:Games Category:Sci-Fi Games Category:Original Games Category:Role-Playing Games Category:Puzzle Games Category:AgentMuffin Category:Display Category:Display C Category:AM Studios Category:Ninkancho Category:Articles containing Japanese language text Category:Original Articles